Mummy Suffered Rare and Painful Disease

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Around 2,900 years ago, an ancient Egyptian man, likely in his
20s, passed away after suffering from a rare, cancerlike disease
that may also have left him with a type of diabetes.

When he died he was mummified, following the procedure of the
time. The
embalmers removed his brain (through the nose it appears),
poured resin-like fluid into his head and pelvis, took out some
of his organs and inserted four linen “packets” into his body. At
some point the mummy was transferred to the 2,300 year-old
sarcophagus of a woman named Kareset, an artifact that is now in
the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, Croatia.

The mummy transfer may have been the work of 19th-century
antiquity traders keen on selling Kareset's coffin but
wanting to have a mummy inside to raise the price.

Until now, scientists had assumed
a female mummy was inside the Egyptian coffin. The new
research reveals not only that the body does not belong to
Kareset, but the male mummy inside was sick. His body showed
telltale signs that he suffered from Hand-Schuller-Christian
disease, an enigmatic condition in which Langerhans cells, a type
of immune cell found in the skin, multiply rapidly. [ See
Photos of the Sick Male Mummy ]

"They tend to replace normal structure of the bone and all other
soft tissues," Dr. Mislav ?avka, a medical doctor at the
University of Zagreb who is one of the study's leaders, said in
an interview with LiveScience. "We could say it is one sort of
cancer."

Scientists still aren't sure what causes the disease, but it is
very rare, affecting about one in 560,000 young adults, more
often males. "In ancient times it was lethal, always," said
?avka, who added that today it can be treated. [ Top
10 Mysterious Diseases ]

?avkaand colleagues examined the mummy using X-rays, a CT scan
and a newly developed technique for magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) scans.

The disease seems to have taken a terrible toll on the ancient
man's body, with images revealing it destroyed parts of his
skeleton, leaving lytic lesions throughout his spine and skull.
The scans also showed what looks like a giant hole in his skull's
frontal-parietal bone, and destruction of a section of one of his
eye sockets, known as the "orbital wall."

Even so,the effects of the disease would have been "very, very
painful," and would have affected the man's appearance,
particularly in the final stage, ?avka told LiveScience.

In addition, it may have led him to suffer from a form of
diabetes. The scans show that his sella turcica, part of the
skull that holds the pituitary gland, is shallow, which suggests
that this gland was also affected by the disease.

"That could have lead to diabetes insipidus," the researchers
write in their paper. The condition would have made it difficult
for his kidneys to conserve water, something that would have
worsened the man's predicament. "Probably he was all the time
thirsty, hungry and had to urinate," ?avka said.

Some believe that with lower life expectancies and fewer
pollutants cancer's prevalence was very low. On the other hand,
some scholars believe cancer was more common than thought, but
simply very hard to detect in ancient remains.

The researchers point out this mummy is the third known case of
Hand-Schuller- Christian's disease from ancient Egypt, suggesting
the condition was as common among the ancients as it is today.
"Tumors are not diseases of the new age," ?avka said.

The new findings are detailed in the most recent issue of the
journal Collegium Antropologicum.